QoS/QoE predictions-based admission control for femto communications

Due to their numerous advantages, current trends show a growing number of femtocell deployments. However, femtocells would become less attractive to the general consumers if they cannot keep up with the service quality that the macro cellular network should provide. Given the fact that the quality of mobile services provided at femtocells depends largely on the level of congestion on the backhaul link, this paper introduces a flow mobility/handover admission control method that makes decisions on layer-three handovers from macro network to femtocell network and/or on entire or partial flow mobility between the two networks based on predicted QoS taking into account metrics such as network load/congestion indications and based on predicted QoE metrics. The performance of the proposed admission control is evaluated via simulations and encouraging results are obtained.